CHENNAI: In the last few months, Pakistan's Aaj TV correspondent Batool Fatima has been on the frontline in war-torn Lebanon and volatile Kashmir. But as she takes up her next assignment on the Pakistani foreign policy beat, she brings with her a "whole new perspective" gained from a conflict reporting workshop organised by Panos South Asia (PSA) last month.

This kind of perspective change among journalists is one of the things PSA attempts to accomplish. Its mission: to foster public debate, pluralism and democracy in the region. Its tools: information, and journalists who wield it.

No lobbying with governments. No working with the poor and marginalised. No funding NGOs. No direct intervention at all.

Instead, as PSA's executive director A.S. Panneerselvan puts it, "we leave lobbying to the public spaces ... and we believe the media mediates public spaces." PSA focuses solely on educating, encouraging and providing resources to journalists in South Asia.

PSA is part of an international network of institutes which have been working with the media to help set development agendas for the last two decades. Since it was created in 1997, PSA has focused its activities on five thematic areas: public health, globalisation, conflict, media pluralism and environment.

It has separate programmes targeted at rookie reporters, mid-careers journalists and news editors and owners. All forms of the media — print, broadcast and online — come under its scanner, with a special focus on the regional language media.

Toolkits

"Ultimately, I want to develop PSA as a one-stop resource centre for the media," says Mr. Panneerselvan. PSA produces several toolkits for journalists, including one on the intricacies of the World Trade Organisation and another on reporting. The latest release is a DVD on the best practices in TV journalism which uses an innovative broadcast news format and a clear South Asian context.

Apart from workshops and toolkits, it's the fellowship programme that offers a participatory experience. Rajshree Dasgupta was a journalist with The Telegraph when she applied for a PSA fellowship on reproductive health. She had just investigated a story on unethical drug trials, but as she says, "you know how it is in a newspaper, you can't go beyond 1,200 words ... [the Panos fellowship] was a chance to do more in-depth research." The fellowship offered her funding for a series of five articles and backstage support through an advisory panel of experienced journalists.

This kind of networking goes beyond the regional framework. "There's a common pool of ideas ... anything truly global in nature, all the Panos Institutes work together," says Mr. Panneerselvan. Learning lessons from other nations includes taking Indian reporters to Africa to see how that continent is coping with an AIDS epidemic, and allowing Nepali and Sri Lankan journalists to explore how the different corners of South Asia live with insurgency.

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